This invention relates to a transferring device for electrical connectors, which is much smaller in size and cheaper to manufacture as compared with a conventional one.
Nowadays, electrical connectors have been very widely utilized in various fields such as computers and communication. Some of the electrical connectors in various computors or instruments are provided with male connectors and the others are provided with female connectors. If a computer or instrument having male (or female) connectors is to be connected to a cable connector which is provided with male (or female) connectors, it will be necessary to interpose a transferring device therebetween. A conventional female connector transferring device 10 provided at its two ends with female connectors 12 and 14 each having twenty five connecting holes is shown in FIG. 1.
In order to illustrate the construction of the conventional transferring device more clearly, FIG. 2 shows the exploded perspective view of an electrical connector transferring device having nine connecting holes, with the intermediate portion thereof being partially removed so as to expose its interior structure. The illustrated transferring device comprises two female connectors 20 and 22. According to common practice in the field of electrical connectors, the connecting holes (or terminals) of a female connector are numbered from the right to the left as viewed from its front side, whereas those of a male connector are from the left to the right. Namely, if we take the connectors shown in FIG. 2 as an example, the receiving ends of the female connector 20 are numbered from 1 to 9 consecutively from the right to the left, while the corresponding receiving ends (or terminals) of the female conector are numbered from 1' to 9' consecutively in the opposite direction. For the purpose of connecting the two connectors 20 and 22 in an one-to-one manner, i.e. the numerals 1, 2 - - - - 9 corresponding to the numerals 1', 2'- - - - - 9', respectively, two conventional methods have been adopted in the past. The first method is to connect each corresponding terminal pair with a wire and then fill the cavities formed among the wires with plastic so as to insulate the connection wires from one another and to enclose the connecting portion between the two female connectors 20 and 22. However, since the size of each electrical connector is very small and since the adjacent terminals are quite close to one another, the welding operation of the connection wires will be very difficult and time-consuming. Besides, since most of the connection wires must intersect with one another as can be understood from FIG. 2, the degree of difficulty in welding the wires is further increased. Accordingly, the manufacturing cost of such conventional transferring device is unavoidably high. In addition, since the connection wires between the connectors 20 and 22 intersect with one another, a considerable amount of plastic must be filled into the resulting cavities, thus inflating not only the size of the connector but also its manufacturing cost.
The second method is to engage the two side edges of a printed circuit board, respectively, into between the two rows of terminals on the back side of the electrical connector 20, and into between the two rows of terminals on the back side of the electrical connector 22 so that the two connectors 20 and 22 can be connected in an one-to-one manner by the use of the circuits formed on the printed circuit board. Finally, the connecting portion including the printed circuit board is enclosed by plastic. Though the assembling operation according to this second method is easier than the above one, the necessity of producing printed circuit boards will greatly inflate the manufacturing cost. Besides, the product is still bulky and thus a lot of plastic must be utilized.
Taking into consideration the aforementioned deficiencies, the primary object of this invention is to provide an electrical connector transferring device which is compact in size, easy to assemble and low in manufacturing cost.